


Notices

by Gadhar



Series: Desiderata [2]
Category: The Expendables (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-22 14:37:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2511275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gadhar/pseuds/Gadhar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn’t need them make him feel like some shit creature a step beneath all the crap and grime of the universe—to be that creature.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Notices

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wanderingsmith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderingsmith/gifts).



> I hate/love/hate writing fics like this. I'm just saying. And I was kinda lost on how to continue this and then I remembered  
>  _You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here_ and I suddenly knew what to do with this thing. Points to poetry for actually inspiring something.
> 
> Also, not entirely happy with this, as it is, but you get to a point where the more you do the more fucked up it gets and I'm at the edge of that more-fucked-up-cliff, so, I stopped changing it, because I don't want to fall.
> 
> Warnings on the [first](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2480603) of the series.

There’s something final about the way Lee says it. ‘I don’t know’ sounds too much like ‘I don’t want to know.’ 

Like ‘I don’t care’. 

And that...that is a feeling damn near about as raw as Lee’s eyes are.

 _Don’t say that,_ Barney wants to say, but it’s selfish for him to do so. It somehow cheapens everything Lee’s said, everything he himself has done to cause everything.

But he’s not willing to just stop. To leave Lee like this. And that’s what has his hand reaching out, going for Lee’s shoulder or a hug, fuck he doesn’t know, just some kind of contact.

And then Lee stops him. Shuts him out. _Shuts down._ “Don’t. Don’t touch me.”

Barney wishes the words had heat to them. That they were said with a fist or even a glare. Anything that didn't have Lee there, cold and detached.

“Just leave.” 

xxx

He’s not sure what he was expecting. But there’s a part of him—no, all of him. He needs to stop lying to himself—that refuses to leave Lee. To leave things like they are. To pretend as though nothing happened. 

He doesn’t want that.

And he feels as though he’s reaching out, through a window that’s slowly closing, and Lee’s on the other side before some black void. 

Or maybe he’s the one in front of void, in the void.

But he’s not sure what he was expecting, when Lee walked out his door the next morning, and kept on walking.

Ignoring Barney on his steps completely.

It’s another nail in his coffin at the least. The final knife in his heart at the most. 

It _is_ his heart, walking away.

And then the hole, where he realizes used to be where he kept Lee—with him, around him, _in him_ —hardens. It makes his chest hurt, makes everything feel tight like he can’t breathe. 

Barney can feel himself shaking, crumbling, falling apart. Unable to think about anything. Nothing matters. 

_Nothing matters._

xxx

They never talk about it. 

They still stand together, looking over compounds or parts to the plane. But Lee’s always a step behind.

They still talk and nod at each other. But it’s never about anything that’s not work.

They still look at each other and he still sees the pieces. Smaller and more chipped every day. The pieces of Lee. The pieces of him. And if they’re not cutting lines into Lee’s face, Barney knows they’re digging into his chest somewhere, deeper and deeper.

He’s willing to take it all. He truly is. If it means Lee’s alive and safe, Barney is willing to take it. Except Lee isn’t safe, he’s not alive.

He laughs still, and smiles, though it’s become as rare as it is forced. Like cracked glass. Lee doesn’t walk into the room and immediately take it over like he used to. When he’s not on missions, thriving on the pure adrenaline, he shrinks away to some shadow Barney’s not even sure he really sees.

And the guys have noticed. 

Every time Barney looks at one of them he expects the glares, the looks of disbelief and hatred. He expects the _‘you stupid fuck’_ feeling. He expects something he deserves. 

But all he meets is similarly empty looks, like the team can’t hold together with part of it splintering.

A house of cards. 

It only takes one.

It seems Barney is that one.

He’s not sure if he hates himself more for it or is gleeful to be proven right.

To prove he was never worth it. To prove that what everyone thought, that he was good, that he had something, that he was somehow _less broken_ than the others, was wrong.

He’s not broken.

He’s not even shattered.

He’s gone.

xxxx

“Something happened...no?”

Galgo slides into the stool next to him, quiet and smooth. Moves Barney’s seen during hostile situations where Galgo was concerned someone was going to lose it.

He almost laughs to himself. That must be what he looks like now, some barely functional pathetic bastard ready to fall apart at the slightest touch.

Barney takes a long swallow of his beer, lines up the bottle next to the line of empty ones he’s been drowning all night. “You could say that.”

“It’s just...things seem a little, uh, well a little tense.”

Barney nods. He’s not sure he would have said tense himself but he can see that, for the rest of them. Caught in a giant rift. He’s honestly surprised it’s taken this long for one of them to say something.

“Should we be worried? Is there something to be done?”

“No Galgo, there’s nothing to be done.”

“But...Christmas, he is upset, yes?”

“That's one way of putting it.”

“So we should do something, right? All of us? To make it better?”

“Is there something you’re trying to saying, Galgo?”

“No. Yes. Wait. I mean – it’s just that, on missions, he seems – you both seem – different. And...that is bad.”

Barney snorts, feels his lip curl and is surprised that he still has the energy to feel angry. “If you’re worried about how we work on missions-”

“No, no! That is not what I meant. No. Not at all. No. I think the missions go fine, we are alive, that is good. But –”

Barney groans, stands from the stool and throws a jacket on around his shoulder. “Get to the point.”

“But, both of you, you and – and Lee. Neither of you is good and that is bad. Very bad. I just thought – shouldn’t we being doing something? To fix that? I mean, all of us. We are a team, yes? Family? We’re suppose to be there for one another.”

Be there. 

Be. There.

_‘Maybe you shouldn't even be here.’_

_‘You left me.’_

_**‘You left me.’** _

Barney turns on his heel, leaves Galgo alone at the bar without an answer and heads out into the parking lot.

He paces, walks back and forth trying to get the words out of his head. The thoughts. Trying not to lose it. Not to fall apart. Not here. _Not now._

But they keep playing on repeat, over and over in the silence and even the roar of cars going by doesn’t make a dent in the weight that has settled on his shoulders since he left Lee’s place what feels like years ago. 

The weight that only grows heavier and Barney isn’t sure he can hold it anymore. Isn’t sure he has the strength or the energy.

But then, he _has_ to carry it. It’s his black cross, his responsibility, his personal hell.

But it’s not _right._

And it’s not fair. All he ever wanted to do was protect them. Protect Lee. And all he’s done is hurt them more, all he’s done is fucked up the only shot he had at—at _something._

Something more than just missions and pointless conversation. Something more than alcohol and cigars. Something more than anger and hate and hurt. Something more than his ghosts that haunt him and the cold barrels of guns against heads or thin steel against wrists. 

Something more than thoughts of enemies blowing everything away.

Something more than losing everything because he’s too _stupid_ to realize he had it.

He had the more.

He had it all.

And he still fucked it up. It was right there, in front of his face, in his bed at night, by his side in battle and he didn’t _see_ it.

It’s what rots his insides, that realization. That hatred for himself. For everything. It rots away everything he’s ever been, everything he had a chance at being and makes him weak. It makes him angry and cold because when he reaches inside, there’s nothing left. Nothing but a cold, sick, blackness that clings to him and drags him down and away.

And he’s been holding it back, barely. But he has to wonder if it’s even worth it. If he’s not worth it, then what’s the point?

If he’s already lost what matters, then what’s the point?

But it’s Lee.

Lee’s the point. 

But that only tears him apart. 

And he can feel it. It’s happening again. Building in his chest and swelling. The tightness and pain. The feel of knives sticking and twisting everywhere inside him. Like he’s pinned to a wall, not moving because it’s not worth it.

He can feel the sludge of sins past worming their way up, crowding him in even as his hope for Lee—for Lee to find something, for Lee to be okay, for Lee not to see what’s happening, for Lee to stay safe with the guys and keep them safe in turn—tries to burn it away.

It hurts and it burns.

It makes him scream.

xxx

The sting across his face, the jerk of his neck that brings a stab of pain, makes Barney shake his head against the fuzziness in his mind.

It couldn’t have been more a few minutes he was out—seconds, really— but the bastards were adamant he stayed awake it seemed.

They wanted to be sure he felt the knife.

And there may have been something—thin and light, sharp— when the knife first cut into his chest. But that lasted for only a while, maybe a day. Give a self-destructive man the means to an end without him having to lift a finger and he’ll take it.

At least this way—this way Lee could get over it. Forget him. 

If only these bastards would slice deeper. Stab something more vital. 

All they seem to want to do though, is make him suffer. Somehow drag him down into a tide of pain and make him crumble under the weight of it.

_They don’t get it._

No one is getting it. He doesn’t need some two-bit mercenary group to make him fall apart. He doesn’t need them make him feel like some shit creature a step beneath all the crap and grime of the universe—to be that creature.

He’s already there.

He’s already slipping even lower.

The only thing keeping him from begging for a blade in his neck is that he’s too fucking tired to care anymore.

He’s too hard.

Barney’s not really sure when it stopped hurting. When his heart just stopped and he became a walking waste of skin. When he let the black inside him take over and make him numb.

But he was weak and he let it happen and he’s all the worse for it. The pain’s not there but neither is anything else.

There’d be no difference if he left.

If he died.

xxxx

“Where is he?” Lee snarls, his fingers digging into Gunner’s skin as he tries to move past him. But the giant fucking Swede won’t fucking _move._ “You sent him out! Where the fuck is he?”

“Believe me, if I knew Christmas, we wouldn’t be standing here.”

“You’re fucking lying! He wouldn’t have–” Lee loses his words in a grunt, stumbling back when Gunner shoves him away.

When he gets his feet back, he whirls on Gunner, ready to go through him if he has to. He can feel Caesar's heavy hand on his shoulder, see Toll creeping up on the edge of his vision.

“Don’t make me shoot you Lee, Barney’d be pissed.”

Lee freezes. His gut twisting.

He doesn’t want to think of what Barney would do if Gunner did shoot him. If anything happened to him.

It’s one thing to want him back after some fuckers kidnap him, but anything more—Barney feeling anything for him is just—it’s not what should be happening.

He can’t think about that. Because there _is_ no more of him and Barney. He’s not even sure there ever was.

Lee swallows as Drummer turns away, phone to his ear. Lee steps back into Galgo who grips his neck in a show of comfort.

He doesn’t even bother to shrug it off.


End file.
